The amount of violent crime committed in the United States against defenseless victims is very high and increasing at a rapid rate. Consequently, there is a strong demand for effective self defense devices.
Most devices used for self defense are: (1) fire arms (pistols and rifles); (2) electric shock devices (stun guns); (3) chemical sprays (MACE); or (4) sound generators (whistles or horns). Unfortunately, carrying a concealed weapon such as a pistol requires a gun permit which, in many states, is difficult to obtain. Pistols are also lethal weapons that can result in the victim's death if the victim is overpowered by the assailant. The use of a stun gun to disable an assailant by electric shock requires physical contact with the assailant. But this close proximity operation of stun guns makes the victim vulnerable to being overpowered by the assailant. Projecting a chemical spray into the eyes of an assailant is not easy or effective unless the victim is relatively close to the assailant, and hence, vulnerable to being overpowered. Making a noise or sounding an alarm is useless against a determined assailant.
My previous light gun inventions (U.S. Pat. No. 5,072,342 issued Dec. 10, 1991 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,243,894 issued Sep. 14, 1993 entitled "Light Gun") represented a fundamentally new innovation in the art of self defense devices in that they provided a means for immobilizing an assailant at a safe distance by temporarily blinding the assailant. They were designed to generate a light flash by discharging an energy storage capacitor through an electronic flash robe. Although the flash robes can be used repetitively without burning out, they required high energy storage capacitors which are expensive. The present invention represents an important technical improvement in that the light flashes are generated by a different process that is designed to obtain much greater flash intensities for more effective results. The flashes are generated by igniting a fast-burning substance such as magnesium filaments inside a sealed glass bulb triggered by an electric current. Thus, the flash bulbs are burned out after each flash and can not be used respectively. The present invention utilizes this flash generating principle to provide a low cost ultra high intensity disposable flash bulb "cartridge" for shooting bursts of light (light bullets) in new light guns designed to fire these cartridges.